You might still see some remaining fuel-hungry 747’s from a few foreign carriers, from the military, like Air Force One, and there will be cargo flights for a good long time, but passenger service has pretty much died out in 2017.

Now that’s just the plan, and it depends on United getting enough replacement aircraft. And the cargo version, well those will keep flying until after you’re dead, Gentle Reader, sry. And it’s possible there could be a 747-8 (the unloved replacement for the aging 747-400 seen above) flight in SFO’s future, who knows.

And IDK, Donald Trump’s Air Force One, that’s sort of a 747 – I can’t think of a reason for him to visit, but anything’s possible. And I guess some foreign carriers might still do something with passenger 747’s who knows.

But the fundamental point is that 2017 will mark the End Of An Era, an entire hubsworth of United 747 will disappear, so if you see a four-engined jet near SFO, it’ll be the even larger Airbus A380, (which is, already. becoming a kind of flying dinosaur itself oh well. You see, they made the wings too big, to facilitate the inevitable stretched cabin that was supposed to come in the future, but whoops, no stretch is coming after all. So all these A380 airplanes you see have too much wing for no good reason. Plus the wings are too short, owing to the sort of arbitrary limit of an 80 meter wingspan, which was necessary to limit the amount of re engineering required to get them to fit into airports. And Airbus could have opted for Boeing-style folding wingtips, but no, they didn’t, oh well.)

Yesterday, owing to the unusual winds what blew away* the fog, I saw jumbo jets above S.F. in places where I normally don’t, but I couldn’t really hear them. (I guess jets have gotten a lot quieter these days.)

Like this low-flying United Air 747-400 near the Ferry Building – you could hardly hear it:

Now it’s sort remarkable how no passenger has died the past decade in an Airbus or Boeing jetliner that either took off or landed in the United States. Of course there was the 9/11 and shortly after that at the end of 2001 there was American Airlines Flight 587, but since then, nothing. That’s a pretty good record, non?

But you people, you don’t listen when they tell you to turn off your portable electronic devices during critical phases of flight. And then stuff like this happens.

Just saying, bro-ham.

Ah the daily Lufthansa flight from Frankfort, Germany. This happens to be an aging Boeing 747-400, but in a few months it will get replaced by a superjumbo A380.* Can you see someone iPodding or texting up there? I can:

Click to expand

*No, contrary to what the Mayor’s Office tells you, the A380 doesn’t use less fuel than legacy aircraft. And the version that’ll soon be coming to SFO each and every day has wings that are too big for its body, and it’s overweight, and blah blah blah. But oh well.